Finite-State Automaton To/From Regular Expression Visualization

TL;DR

This paper introduces visualization tools for automata theory that help students understand the transformation between finite-state automata and regular expressions, enhancing learning through interactive step-by-step visualization.

Contribution

The paper presents novel visualization tools for FSM and regular expressions, including their implementation and empirical evaluation in an educational setting.

Findings

Tools are well-received by students

Tools effectively aid understanding of automata transformations

Learning to use the tools imposes low cognitive load

Abstract

Most Formal Languages and Automata Theory courses explore the duality between computation models to recognize words in a language and computation models to generate words in a language. For students unaccustomed to formal statements, these transformations are rarely intuitive. To assist students with such transformations, visualization tools can play a pivotal role. This article presents visualization tools developed for FSM -- a domain-specific language for the Automata Theory classroom -- to transform a finite state automaton to a regular expression and vice versa. Using these tools, the user may provide an arbitrary finite-state machine or an arbitrary regular expression and step forward and step backwards through a transformation. At each step, the visualization describes the step taken. The tools are outlined, their implementation is described, and they are compared with related work. In addition, empirical data collected from a control group is presented. The empirical data suggests that the tools are well-received, effective, and learning how to use them has a low extraneous cognitive load.